Ballistic Fingerprinting poll

done....

Done 98%no

Done:

153 No
3 Yes

Oh boy. Judging by the results, that accusation of "poll tampering" is going to rear its ugly head again. Or is that "head it's ugly rear?"

Maryland's ballistic database should be continued based on its record of success

Click to expand...

I'd like to see him list ONE instance where it has had anything that can be called "success"
And maybe, in the interrest of balanced reporting, WBAL should investigate contributions to quinter.


edit: when responding, please copy and paste the link so we don't have the station whining about "gun nuts cheating." They don't need to know where you got the link.

238 - 3
In our favor, not too bad.

Maryland's ballistic database should be continued based on its record of success...

Click to expand...

It has successfully driven up the price of firearms and made them more inaccessible to commoners. That was the intention.

I live in Maryland, and I want a ballistic database of all guns sold.

There is not "ONE instance" of this database preventing or solving a crime, but in the 1890s there was not one instance of fingerprinting solving or preventing a crime. Since then, countless crimes have been solved/prevented by police use of fingerprinting. Criminals can easily alter guns to prevent them from being matched to a ballistic database, and criminals can easily wear gloves to prevent leaving fingerprints. But each year hundreds, maybe thousands of criminals are caught and/or convicted because they leave finger prints behind. If even 10 more criminals are caught each year because of a ballistic database, I believe it would be worth it. This is not a solution for all our crime problems, and some police departments will fail to use it correctly (or abuse it) but the easier we make it for the police to catch/convict the stupid criminals, the more time/money they can spend on the smart criminals.

well, how many millions would you have them spend before you'd be willing to write it off as a failure. If I remember correctly, they're getting close to $ million now. That's a lot of money that could have spend on catching "smart criminals."

Besides, the fact that you fail to mention is that the vast majority of guns used in crimes aren't in the database and it would take decades before those guns not in the database to be destroyed or removed from illegal circulation. Also, even if a gun in the database is used in a crime, the vast majority of guns used in crimes are stolen anyway. What good does it do when all the ballistic fingerprint does is lead you back to the original owner of the gun? Ballistic fingerprinting is a good tool for matching a specific gun to a casing found at a crime scene and connecting cases found at different crime scenes. A database of all the ballistic fingerprints of new guns, however, is a HUGE waste of money.

If even 10 more criminals are caught each year because of a ballistic database, I believe it would be worth it.

Click to expand...

Is that kind of like "If it saves one child..."?

You know deep down this is, Really for the Children

All the balistic fingerprinting does is show us what gun was used in a crime. It doesn't actually lead to a criminal.

I can imagine how the scenario goes.

1. Bullet is recovered from a crime scene.
2. Ballistic fingerprint matches up with a 9mm handgun owned by Joe Blow.
3. Gun is listed as being stolen 2 years ago.
All it did was lead back to a gun owner who had his legal gun stolen. He is out the money he paid for the firearm and you still have a criminal on the street. Why not work on preventing crime in the first place.
ballistic fingerprinting isn't all its cracked up to be.

649 No. 14 Yes. LOL!

668 Us
14 Them

We win.

.02 deposited!

Let's see $4 million spent in 5 years. $800,000 per year that could have funded 5 more cops each year or go to improve the DNA database. The main question is what do you get for the money spent. In this case there has been 0 benefit at a significant cost.

By the way, I also live in MD.

nico, deej, Clean97GTI, Rabid Rabbit, et al, I respect and defend your right to your opinion.

But you are not giving me a lot of facts that make me want to change my opinion.

The scenario of a shell casing recovered at a crime scene leading back to a handgun stolen from Joe Blow is going to happen a lot. Most leads in criminal investigations are dead ends, but you have to chase down all the leads to find the one that leads to the suspect.

Another scenario might be the police have already caught the burglar who stole the gun from Joe Blow, and now they can lean on him to tell to whom he sold Joe Blow’s gun.

Another could be it leads back to someone who brought the gun as a straw purchaser for a criminal, someone whom records show has brought 10 handguns in the past year and now can’t produce any of them.

Or like the rifle used by the Beltway Sniper, it leads to a gun dealer who has no record of selling the gun, and suddenly claims he just noticed it was “stolen.†(If we want to prevent crime, we can start with making guys like that responsible for their gun inventory.)

Speculation on what could happen is endless, and I of course don’t know what, if any, of the above scenarios will happen. And neither does anyone else. Another $4 million (if that is the real cost) and 5 more years to find out is extremely cheap for anything the government does.

Another problem with ballistic fingerprinting that I forgot to mention is the software involved in the database is ineffective at identifying a gun based on the ballistic fingerprint. A study from the California DOJ (link requires Acrobat Reader) says this:

Automated computer matching systems do not provide conclusive results. Rather, a list of potential candidates are presented that must be manually reviewed. When applying this technology to the concept of mass sampling of manufactured firearms a huge inventory of potential candidates will be generated for manual review. This study indicates that this number of candidate cases will be so large as to be impractical and will likely create logistic complications so great that they cannot be effectively addressed.

Click to expand...

Should we be throwing away $800,000 a year in tax money on the chance that they might eventually be able to make a useful database?

Yes 28 2%
No 1473 98%

Wow. I've never seen a more nuked poll.

LaEscopeta,
Besides being an ineffectual waste of money, Balistic Fingerprinting is a tool of the anti-gunners to burden US with higher prices and less choice of weapons. It's one more INFRINGEMENT on the RKBA. For that reason alone, I am against it even if a few crimes are not solved. Sometimes we just have to deal with the fact that criminals get away with their crimes. We could have very little gun crime at all if we simply accepted living in a ruthless police state, but that's not where I want to be.

P.S. I hope you can join us in Annapolis tomorrow (3/9/05) for "Gun-day". That is, if you're not planning to testify AGAINST the repeal of the Ballistic Fingerprint law!

The problem is that if you change the extractor out on a pistol, the fingerprint will change and be irrelevent. If you change the barrel out, the finger print will change and be irrelevent. If you replace the slide to change the caliber, the fingerprint will be irrelevent. There are too many easy ways to change the fingerprint for it to work. Indeed, if you shoot the pistol, you change the fingerprint. Ballistic Fingerprinting is a misnomer of the greatest degree that it is irresponsible to even compare it to fingerprinting. The only way to destroy real fingerprints is to cut the fingers off or massively scar the finger tips.

But, if you murder somebody and want to keep the pistol, then pull the extractor and buff it with a dremmel, and then buff the breach face and the ejector and voila, no finger print. It is too easy to get around.

Ash

I wouldn't necessarily say the poll's been nuked. Hell, even the MD State Police say the program's useless and want it repealed.

didn't you hear? That's just because the current head of the State Police is just a shill for Ehrlich and all the MD gun nuts. It has nothing to do with the CA DOJ (of all places!) report that says it's a waste.